https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1
Letters
Investigate the origins of COVID-19
Jesse D. Bloom1,2, Yujia Alina Chan3, Ralph S. Baric4, Pamela J.
Bjorkman5, Sarah Cobey6, Benjamin E. Deverman3, David N. Fisman7,
Ravindra Gupta8, Akiko Iwasaki9,2, Marc Lipsitch10, Ruslan Medzhitov9,2,
Richard A. Neher11, Rasmus Nielsen12, Nick Patterson13, Tim Stearns14,
Erik van Nimwegen11, Michael Worobey15, David A. Relman16,17,*
See all authors and affiliations
Science 14 May 2021:
Vol. 372, Issue 6543, pp. 694
DOI: 10.1126/science.abj0016
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On 30 December 2019, the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases
notified the world about a pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China
(1). Since then, scientists have made remarkable progress in
understanding the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), its transmission, pathogenesis, and
mitigation by vaccines, therapeutics, and non-pharmaceutical
interventions. Yet more investigation is still needed to determine the
origin of the pandemic. Theories of accidental release from a lab and
zoonotic spillover both remain viable. Knowing how COVID-19 emerged is
critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future
outbreaks.
In May 2020, the World Health Assembly requested that the World Health
Organization (WHO) director-general work closely with partners to
determine the origins of SARS-CoV-2 (2). In November, the Terms of
Reference for a China–WHO joint study were released (3). The
information, data, and samples for the study's first phase were
collected and summarized by the Chinese half of the team; the rest of
the team built on this analysis. Although there were no findings in
clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident, the team
assessed a zoonotic spillover from an intermediate host as “likely to
very likely,” and a laboratory incident as “extremely unlikely” [(4), p.
9]. Furthermore, the two theories were not given balanced consideration.
Only 4 of the 313 pages of the report and its annexes addressed the
possibility of a laboratory accident (4). Notably, WHO Director-General
Tedros Ghebreyesus commented that the report's consideration of evidence
supporting a laboratory accident was insufficient and offered to provide
additional resources to fully evaluate the possibility (5).
As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO
director-general (5), the United States and 13 other countries (6), and
the European Union (7) that greater clarity about the origins of this
pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses
about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have
sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent,
objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to
independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of
conflicts of interest. Public health agencies and research laboratories
alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should
document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are
conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by
independent experts.
Finally, in this time of unfortunate anti-Asian sentiment in some
countries, we note that at the beginning of the pandemic, it was Chinese
doctors, scientists, journalists, and citizens who shared with the world
crucial information about the spread of the virus—often at great
personal cost (8, 9). We should show the same determination in promoting
a dispassionate science-based discourse on this difficult but important
issue.
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References and Notes
↵
“Undiagnosed pneumonia—China (Hubei): Request for information,”
ProMED post (2019); https://promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=6864153.
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↵
World Health Assembly Resolution 73.1: COVID-19 response (2020);
https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA73/A73_R1-en.pdf.
Google Scholar
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WHO, “WHO-convened global study of the origins of SARS-CoV-2”
(2020);
www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-convened-global-study-of-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2.
Google Scholar
↵
WHO, “WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China
part” (2021);
www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part.
Google Scholar
↵
WHO, “WHO director-general's remarks at the Member State Briefing
on the report of the international team studying the origins of
SARS-CoV-2” (2021);
www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-remarks-at-the-member-state-briefing-on-the-report-of-the-international-team-studying-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2.
Google Scholar
↵
US Department of State, “Joint statement on the WHO-Convened
COVID-19 origins study” (2021);
www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-who-convened-covid-19-origins-study/.
Google Scholar
↵
Delegation of the European Union to the UN and other International
Organizations in Geneva “EU statement on the WHO-led COVID-19 origins
study” (2021);
https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/un-geneva/95960/eu-statement-who-led-covid-19-origins-study_en.
Google Scholar
↵
J. Hollingsworth, Y. Xiong, “The truthtellers: China created a
story of the pandemic. These people revealed details Beijing left out,”
CNN( 2021).
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A. Green, L. Wenliang, Lancet 395, 682 (2020).
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Article Information
vol. 372 no. 6543 694
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj0016
PubMed:
33986172
Published By:
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Online ISSN:
1095-9203
History:
.
Copyright & Usage:
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee
American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to
original U.S. Government Works
http://www.sciencemag.org/about/science-licenses-journal-article-reuseThis
is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals
Default License.
Other Contributors:
Jennifer Sills
Author Information
Jesse D. Bloom1,2, Yujia Alina Chan3, Ralph S. Baric4, Pamela J.
Bjorkman5, Sarah Cobey6, Benjamin E. Deverman3, David N. Fisman7,
Ravindra Gupta8, Akiko Iwasaki9,2, Marc Lipsitch10, Ruslan Medzhitov9,2,
Richard A. Neher11, Rasmus Nielsen12, Nick Patterson13, Tim Stearns14,
Erik van Nimwegen11, Michael Worobey15, David A. Relman16,17,*
1Basic Sciences and Computational Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.
2Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, MD 20815, USA.
3Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA 02142, USA.
4Department of Epidemiology and Department of Microbiology &
Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
27599, USA.
5Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
6Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
7Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto,
Toronto, ON M5S 1A8, Canada.
8Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology & Infectious
Disease, Cambridge, UK.
9Department of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine,
New Haven, CT 06519, USA.
10Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and Center for
Communicable Disease Dynamics, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H.
Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
11Biozentrum, University of Basel and Swiss Institute of
Bioinformatics, Basel, Switzerland.
12Department of Integrative Biology and Department of Statistics,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
13Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
14Department of Biology and Department of Genetics, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
15Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of
Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
16Department of Medicine and Department of Microbiology &
Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
17Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
↵* Corresponding author. Email: relman@xxxxxxxxxxxx
